Category: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Apple Rush

Apple time 2023. Red Delicious.

My focus in the garden turned to apples. By weight, it is the biggest crop I grow. Doing something useful with them drives me to spend much kitchen time processing them. Zestar! and Earliblaze are finished with Red Delicious remaining to close out the garden season.

Of the four varieties I grow, Red Delicious hang the longest on the tree. When they produce, there are many, many of of them. Our needs for juice, applesauce, apple butter, dried apples, and fresh eating are modest compared to the quantity on the tree. I’m already looking for placement of most of them in a Community Supported Agriculture project.

Tomatoes are finishing and it has been a good season. Because of spring trouble getting seedlings to take, there weren’t as many, or as many different varieties, as I had hoped. The difference this year compared to last is that we used most garden tomatoes in our kitchen instead of giving them away. Tomatoes are a brief delight of summer. Once ours are gone, I expect to buy very few tomatoes at the grocer.

I took down the portable greenhouse and noticed a problem with the zipper at the access point. I don’t know if it will be usable next year but I folded it up and put away the frame. Replacing it will be a spring decision, although I likely will. The portable greenhouses are good for a couple of seasons.

I need to figure out fall garden plot preparation. Where will the burn pile be? Where will the garlic go next month? Where will tomatoes go next year?

The burn pile is important because I move it around to deposit minerals throughout the garden. Because we are in a drought I won’t actually burn anything until rain comes. There needs to be plenty of space to pile it high while we wait.

I plan to plant 100 garlic seeds and it will likely be in the plot where the garden composter currently lives. The pallets used to make the composter are getting old and deteriorated. I will likely move the composter to the west side of the garden. I hang my Practical Farmers of Iowa sign on it, so on that side, it may be more visible from the street.

Finally, there are tomatoes, likely the most important crop I grow. This year, deer were able to jump the fence and eat many small tomato plants. Next year I plan to return to a crowding method of tomato planting. By giving deer no place to land inside the fence, they can’t jump in, and the plants grow better. The issue is it crowds me as well. I liked having four-foot rows between the tomatoes this year. It made it easier for me to get among the plants to weed and harvest. It made it easier for the deer as well. I may have enough fencing to install eight-foot tall chicken wire around them next year. This may be the compromise I choose to keep four foot rows. Which plot will tomatoes go? I’m not sure yet, although I favor following the garlic.

As home life turns to apple processing, I enjoy the sense of closure it brings. In years when there are few apples, gardening doesn’t seem the same. In the coming days I’ll embrace the apple rush. Who knows how many more there will be?

Categories
Writing

Kiss of Autumn

Green Ash tree leaves touched by the cold.

Overnight temperatures reached 50 degrees this week. I examined our trees the next day and the Green Ash and Autumn Blaze Maple were both kissed by cool weather and leaves had begun to turn. Summer is over before we know it.

There is a large-scale sporting event this morning. I had to look it up: The University of Iowa football team is playing Utah State at Nile Kinnick Stadium. It’s a day to avoid the traffic and congestion in the county seat.

I attended a few football games at Kinnick. When in graduate school, I lived near the stadium where the house-owner rented his yard for game-day parking. Sometimes patrons had an extra ticket to give us. When I worked in Cedar Rapids, one of my supervisors was a sporting enthusiast. He required his managers to attend certain games with him so I went with the group to Kinnick for an unremarkable contest. During meetings with national staff, we were required to attend professional sporting events. That’s how I was able to watch Patrick Ewing play basketball in Dallas. I don’t regret learning of the ballet-like moves of professional basketball players. Sports has not been my thing.

In high school, almost every freshman boy tried out for the football team. I didn’t make the cut and decided to pursue interests in the arts: reading, writing, music, and theater. High school was an awkward time and I spent most of my non-classroom time on the high school stage crew, reading, or practicing the guitar. Most of my classmates seemed to have a natural instinct to find a partner and be with each other. That wasn’t my thing either.

Being part of a sports team was not that interesting. I suppose of one were on the 1961 New York Yankees roster it would be different. When I played baseball for the Sears Roebuck team it was never at that level. That was a team: Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Roger Maris, Moose Skowron, Yogi Berra, Clete Boyer, Mickey Mantle, Bobby Richardson, and the rest. On a Saturday in the 1960s, one could listen to the neighbor’s backyard radio broadcasting Chicago baseball games from across the alley. After Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961, I lost interest in watching or listening to baseball games on television or the radio.

In 1982, when I worked at the University of Iowa, the football team had a berth to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1959. It was a really big deal and half the city cleared out to travel to Pasadena for the game. I lived on Market Street in a small apartment and tuned in to watch on my 12-inch black and white television. Iowa was pathetic. Washington shut out Iowa 28-0, the first Rose Bowl shutout in 29 years. “Sports are important at a Big Ten university,” Hayden Fry said in his memoir. He apparently didn’t mean winning was.

It will be cool this morning, with temperatures rising to above 90 degrees this afternoon. I’ll work among my apple tress for a while, then turn indoors to process garden produce. I can see the end of the garden. It has been good this year.

Now that the season has begun to turn, I linger under the foliage. At least for a few more times as late summer becomes autumn.

Categories
Writing

Pivot Toward Fall Writing

Seed garlic for 2023-2024 season.

Summer races toward its end. I’m cognizant there are not that many summers left, a baker’s dozen if I’m lucky. I plan to live each one as best I can without staking a claim to permanence. I’ve come to believe life is lived best in motion. We crave permanence which is anathema to living.

After a break this Labor Day weekend, I turn to my autobiography again. There is a lot to do. Last winter I wrote through to the end of graduate school and sent the draft to a couple of people for feedback. Unlike the traditional chronology of the first part, the next is complex. I have in mind writing it in threads that can be separated from the cloth, multiple concurrent chronologies. I return to the hope this narrative will be relevant to our child.

It has been a weird summer with my spouse gone for the last seven weeks. I don’t mind time alone, yet after a few weeks, I’m ready for us to be together again. We’re not sure how much longer this will continue.

August is the beginning of garden harvest, so she’s missed most of the fresh vegetables. When I make a day trip to visit and help, I take some of what is ready for their table. It’s not the same as being here.

Drought is oppressive. The 2012 drought seemed worse than this year. Both have been bad. We’ll see what the state climatologist has to say once the weather breaks. The last few days have been cooler, yet no rain. No rain forecast for the next week or more. We need rain.

I looked in my cookbooks for a recipe to use hot peppers, tomatillos, garlic and cilantro and found one for tomatillo salsa. It used up half the tomatillos on the counter. That will have to do for this afternoon.

Stroke by stroke I take up writing again. Whatever this summer was, I’m ready to pivot to what’s next. In October I’ll plant the garlic for next July’s crop and it will feel like the garden is done. For today, I’m waiting for Red Delicious apples to ripen, making a couple more pints of tomato sauce, and getting back to writing.

Here we go!

Categories
Writing

August Heat Wave

Part of the shore of Lake Macbride after continued drought conditions.

It is supposed to get hot during Iowa summer, yet not like this. On Wednesday and Thursday, ambient temperatures climbed to nearly 100 degrees with heat indexes approaching 120. I got outside shortly after dawn and walked along the lake shore. Neighbors were also on the trail early to beat the heat. The air was like soup. I spent most of the days indoors after walking and tending the garden.

August is almost a five week month. The writing I have done for Blog for Iowa is helping me get in practice to take up my autobiography again after Labor Day. My readership on this site after cross posting has not been as good as usual. Perhaps that is because my long-time readers are used to a different kind of writing. That’s okay. The small stipend I received to cover a vacation helped pay for necessary, existential things around the house. Things like pumping the septic tank.

I asked my friends on social media what book I should read next. There were plenty of suggestions. I picked The Circle of Reason by Amitov Ghosh, to be followed by A Fever In The Heartland by Timothy Egan. If you have reading suggestions, please leave a comment. Rarely has someone recommended something that I didn’t evaluate and read it.

It occurs to me I haven’t been to the farmer’s market in a couple of years. As I scaled up the garden, I needed less outside produce. I can’t imaging going to the orchard for apples as my trees have more than I can harvest before they fall. The pear tree is keeping us in sweet fruit, so I skipped all the commercial berries, peaches, nectarines and the like in favor of eating from our yard.

The heat is not good for septuagenarians. I feel healthy, yet realize I have to take it easy on working outdoors when it’s hot and humid. All the indoors time has not been particularly good for me, yet I’m able to process vegetables and fruit and cross things off my electronic to-do list. I look forward to autumn.

More and more I feel like a survivor. My parents and grandparents are gone, and I never had an excessive number of friends when I lived in Davenport before 1970. My political friends are aging and dying. I don’t feel like driving, except when I have to get groceries or run an errand. I need a haircut.

My spouse has been at her sister’s home for the last month, so I do what I want indoors. Notably, the radio has been on whenever I want to listen. Our child has their own life, which increasingly doesn’t involve parents. All of this means I am forced to deal with aging in America, which includes a large rasher of loneliness. I’ll be fine. As a writer, I crave being alone with my thoughts and writing.

The pattern of a hot August lives in memory. Living in this week’s excess heat hasn’t followed any traditional pattern. We have a new air conditioner so that’s a plus. (I raise a toast to Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning). Except for dairy products, there is no reason to leave the house. Some say I should give up dairy products, but I’m not ready. When I went outside to get the mail, the neighborhood was exceedingly quiet. So quiet, it was eerie.

I can see the end of this heat wave and it gives me hope. Soon my spouse will be home and we’ll get back to whatever passes for normal. We survived the coronavirus pandemic without contracting COVID-19. We’ll survive this.

Categories
Writing

No Off-Years

Johnson County Democrats at a summer parade. Year unknown.

The Johnson County Democrats created a political campaign called “No Off-Years.” In a recent email, State Senator Zach Wahls explained:

I’m reaching out to invite you to join our “No Off-Years” campaign – a movement that goes beyond the elections every two years and focuses on doing the important organizing work that will turn Iowa blue again.

Our democracy thrives when we, the people, are actively involved in shaping its path. It’s not just about rallying before elections – it’s about keeping our momentum going consistently. That’s the idea behind “No Off-Years.”

Traditionally, we’ve concentrated on election periods, but I believe Democrats and anyone who values progress must stay engaged throughout the year. We need to foster lasting change, build connections, and ensure our voices are heard, no matter the season.

Email from State Senator Zach Wahls, Aug. 16, 2023.

A local organizer from Solon, got down to brass tacks while promoting training for a September canvass:

This is the path forward to better governance in the state of Iowa. We need to knock on doors and talk to our neighbors about why we think it is important support democratic candidates and really turn out and vote in huge numbers.

Email from Seth Zimmerman, Aug. 14, 2023.

What I’m hearing is Democrats developed special messaging focused on identifying where voters are politically, and encouraging them to join the mainstream Democrats in turning out for the 2024 general election.

Whatever No Off-Years becomes, I support the effort unequivocally. So should readers.

My friends and I have been talking about how to support the effort. Our small coterie of the 70-plus crowd has been debating whether to walk turfs to knock on doors at all. If they do so, some need a walker and there are various kinds from which to choose. Our theory is if one is door-knocking with a walker, 1). a person can sit and rest when needed, and 2). we might get a few sympathy votes. Making phone calls to friends and neighbors makes more sense for us than knocking doors, although that has its issues. Our conclusion in numerous telephone conversations is the next generation needs to step up and manage most of the in-person part of this campaign.

It is important to note that the main purpose of pre-election canvassing is to target and identify potential voters for our candidates, then get them out to vote. I recall the first Obama campaign during the general election. Our neighborhood organizer had a well-annotated list of everyone in the neighborhood and crossed them off once they committed to voting for Obama or said they wouldn’t. As election day approached, we were able to assess each uncommitted person on the list and make a last-ditch effort to persuade them before the polls closed. We didn’t perceive this as rallying before the election, but rather dotting our i’s and crossing t’s to bring every possible voter to the polls.

Iowa Democrats have bottomed out in our election of candidates in federal, state and local races. There is a need to change that going forward if we want to be a viable party that attracts new people. The No Off-Years campaign is worth trying. After all doing nothing is a worse option.

Categories
Writing

Take Your Medicine, Watch Iowa Press

Johnson County Democrats at the 2022 Solon Beef Days parade.

In an email exchange with a friend, I asked whether they would attend the Iowa State Fair on Saturday when the two Democratic candidates other than Joe Biden were scheduled to appear at the Des Moines Register Soapbox. They said yes, and would bird dog some of the Republicans as well.

Had I known Semafor journalist Dave Weigel would be there, I might have driven to the state capitol for a chance to meet him.

Thursday, on their way to the state fair, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stopped by Iowa Press to record the following episode.

In my last two posts, I wrote about whether the abortion dog would hunt in Iowa. The topic came up when Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Register had this question:

Stephen Gruber-Miller: Iowa republicans this summer passed a ban on abortion at about six weeks into a pregnancy.

I’m curious, as you’re talking to members of the Democratic Party around the state who are recruiting candidates, who are trying to encourage people to run for office, is that something that comes up as a motivator for people to run for office?

Hart: Well, absolutely.

I think always when you are recruiting for candidates and as people are considering running for office, it’s the issues that often drive them.

And this is an issue that is a great motivator not only because of the fact that this law is unpopular, that people recognize that it’s not very workable, that to have a law where decisions are made at six weeks where most women don’t even know they’re pregnant, that that just does not work.

And so, issues are really important to people and they will step up accordingly because it’s far reaching.

It affects how many OBGYNs are attracted to work in this state when we already have a shortage.

It affects women’s health care in general.

And so, these are issues that are important to people and motivate them to run.

Iowa Press Transcript Aug. 11, 2023.

Whenever our Democratic leaders appear on Iowa Press, we should tune in. Not because it’s great television (it often isn’t) but because if we ever want to dig out from Republican dominance in the state we have to have a common platform from which to make our campaigns. Watching the party leader, and a Democratic governor in Iowa to stump for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the kind of boilerplate information we must assimilate.

Make sure you caffeinate before watching this program.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

How Do Iowa Democrats Proceed?

State Senator Bob Dvorsky waving at the cameraman in the Solon Beef Days parade, July 2013.

In 2006 I drove from work in Cedar Rapids to the Democratic campaign office in Iowa City once a week to make phone calls for Dave Loebsack. Staffer Tyler Wilson had a stack of papers with the names of people for me to call. That was a time when people would take a phone call from a political canvasser and have a discussion. I fondly recall the flip phone I used to make those campaign calls.

During the calls, I found Democrats had voted for Republican Jim Leach. They had had it after his support for the George W. Bush administration and would vote Democratic in 2006. By doing so, Dave Loebsack was elected to the U.S. Congress where he served from 2007 until 2021. It was a win: clean, pure and simple.

Chet Culver was elected governor that year but it was anything but a clean win. There was dissatisfaction among Democrats over the conservative selection he and lieutenant governor candidate Patty Judge represented. The vast geography, sparsely sprinkled with Democratic voters, had spoken in the primary. They didn’t want some lefty like Mike Blouin, Sal Mohammad, or Ed Fallon as chief executive officer of the state.

The run up to the 2006 election was a heady time for Iowa Democrats. The feeling culminated in 2008 with Barack Obama winning the nomination for president and carrying Iowa in the general election. The sparkle went off those years quickly. Loebsack won reelection. Culver did not when Terry Branstad re-emerged as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2010. Obama’s margin eroded by the time of his re-election in 2012. Since then, it has been all Republican in Iowa, culminating in the trifecta they won in the 2016 general election. Since then, they added to their majority.

What lesson does the ten-year period between 2006 and 2016 have to teach us? I’m sure many people have thought about this and have opinions. Here’s mine.

There is no returning to 2006 or 2008. With the rise in campaign technology beginning with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, how campaigns were conducted changed. Obama brought the technology of campaigns together and we had an edge on Republicans. That didn’t last long.

In the 2012 campaign for Iowa House District 73, I used what I had learned from Obama about targeting voters. I soon discovered our opponent was targeting the exact same voters during canvasses. I noticed Jeff Kaufmann driving his canvassers around Mechanicsville and in other places on multiple occasions during the campaign. Sometimes I waited until the Kaufmann canvasser finished before making my pitch to the same voter. They seemed to get there first.

Technology is no longer an edge for Democrats. If one reads how the Trump campaign used data aggregation during their elections, and how they micro-targeted voters, they surpassed whatever Obama did in that regard. That may be because they viewed campaigns as a money-generating operation more than a traditional political campaign.

The effect of the pandemic is clear: it created isolation as we dodged COVID-19. Isolation served Republican interests. It unified them like never before and people I had known for years as inactive voters now activated as Republicans.

Working a campaign’s voter database is important. The luster of it faded into a drudgery of making calls and knocking doors. It seems like the wrong direction to perpetuate the idea of year-around calling and door knocking. I agree, there are no off years. I don’t agree using the same crooked sawhorse to build the same obsolete operation. Democrats must focus on winning the next election instead.

Leadership is important. Jennifer Konfrst, Zach Wahls, Sarah Trone Garriott, J.D. Scholten, and others represent the future of Iowa Democrats. Yeah, I know Wahls rubbed his fellow elected officials the wrong way while minority leader. That happened yet Wahls retains excellent prospects for leadership. If the future of the party is based on doing known things only, Democrats have no hope. Who else besides younger members of the elected cohort will lead? The correct answer is no one: we’ll get lost in the wilderness. For the Israelites, that was forty years. There is no promised land of politics today.

The electorate has changed and is changing. People are losing interest in politics. Young Iowans appear to be trending conservative. I see a lot of DeSantis support among Iowa Republicans. The open question is whether Iowa will be a decider in their primary contest. We’ll see what happens in 2024, but if it’s a rematch between Biden and Trump, I predict voters won’t turn out like they did in 2020.

The path forward for Democrats is engagement in society. I don’t mean in politics. Being seen on the library board, at K-12 functions, at the town festival planning committee, and other public spaces is exceedingly important. It is where people of differing political views meet and discuss our politics. For me, that is the path forward few are discussing in August 2023.

Would love to hear your thoughts about the path forward for Iowa Democrats. Leave a brief comment on this post if so inclined.

Categories
Writing

Who Knew It Would Change That Fast?

Firewood left on the state park trail.

When I retired the first time in July 2009, there was an office party with a sheet cake at the transportation and logistics company. The founder’s son telephoned me with well wishes. I wasn’t done working at age 57, yet knew where I worked for the previous 25 years would be seen only in the rear-view mirror. I never looked back.

When I retired for the second time, in April 2020 during the pandemic, I had little idea that would be it. Our household managed to avoid COVID-19 and my health was better than it had been for a long time, and still is. Funny how when you stop being with people, fewer upper respiratory diseases are contracted. Now that the coronavirus is normalized, I thought there would be something next. So far, most of my work has been centered around writing and home life. There has been no next and I need one.

With five COVID-19 vaccinations, I am as protected as a person can get. Recently, most friends who contract the virus don’t die from it unless there are complicating health factors. It seems a lot of people continue to test positive for COVID-19. The virus is our permanent companion and a reminder of our mortality.

I visit the doctor’s office more frequently, although that is partly because I have extra time available. I know there are benefits included with Medicare that have no co-pays. I press the clinic to deliver those services. Based on their current financial condition, they could use the revenues. The end result is my health seems closely monitored and I’m ready for what’s next.

So what am I waiting for? In part, for the second coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Of course, this is William Butler Yeats from The Second Coming. In a similar and more personal way, I wrote about things falling apart to the chair of the county Democratic Party after our last central committee meeting, “I haven’t found anyone to replace me on the central committee yet. There is almost no interest in doing extra things in politics or anything else. We, as a society, didn’t used to be this way.” While Yeats was writing about World War I, a lot of anarchy has been loosed in society in 2023. There is not a lot of visible conviction.

I’ll get through this patch of anarchy and find passionate intensity again, no doubt. I just wish I had realized earlier how fast everything would change.

Categories
Writing

Heat of the Day

Kirby’s Moving Company van on July 30, 2023.

While moving someone across Des Moines the last few days, the ambient temperatures have been exceedingly hot… close to 100 degrees some days. I drank a lot of water and took frequent breaks from work.

On Sunday I was present for the second truckload of stuff heading to the new place. Being a long-time transportation person, I hung with the crew most of the day, helping load, then unload the stuff. It was kind of them to allow a septuagenarian weakling to be a small part of the operation.

The owner served three tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom, so I compared notes about being in the military. He said the first tour he dined solely on Meals – Ready to Eat (MREs) for 29 days, which I found to be appalling. I mean, for as much money as the U.S. spent on that war, they could at least have furnished a mess crew with provisions to prepare meals. From time to time, someone hunted a deer and the dried the meat into jerky. At least they had that to look forward to.

I made it a point to talk to each crew member. At the loading location there were more crew members, some of whom had another job in the afternoon. At the unloading point there were three of them, plus me. While I’m not as strong as I used to be, it was great hanging out with strong, young men and unloading the truck.

The new place is a 100-year-old home with everything that means. The house isn’t standard anything and that created some challenges. There will be a process of working through them. The laundry equipment is in the basement where I could envision a homemaker working a wringer washer like my aunt did. Luckily the current machine is a couple upgrades from a wringer washer. The unusual layout could be nice once all the settling in is accomplished.

Tomorrow I start posting at Blog for Iowa for the month of August. I plan to cross post here, so stay tuned!

Categories
Writing

High Summer in Iowa

Fennel, patty pan squash, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, cauliflower, and snow peas from the garden on July 11, 2023.

Photographs of garden vegetables serve as therapy. Therapy to get me to write and post more often. The harvest of vegetables has been better than any year I remember. It’s not even tomato and pepper season!

The biggest writing project I’ve had in a while is finished and ready to post Thursday on multiple sites. After that, I’m covering a vacation on Blog for Iowa in August. Then, I’ll return to my autobiography. Like the concertina that opens the Broadway play Carnival, it’s time to get the writer’s squeeze box going.

There is nothing wrong with just being. When I walk on the state park trail most mornings, I listen for birds, observe where sunlight and shade fall, and feel cobwebs draped across the trail caught on my skin. There are many challenges in life. That half hour is a time to let them go and concentrate on being here.

Afternoon ambient temperatures now reach into the 90s. Except to check the garden, I stay indoors when it is so hot. We are fortunate to be able to afford air conditioning. Once the household chores are caught up, I can sit at my table and write. I’ve been doing more of it now that high summer has arrived in Iowa.